The creators of The Kite Runner understand this much: trying to keep secrets might kill you, but revealing them makes for some pretty scintillating storytelling.

The Kite Runner, which opened Friday at Theatre Calgary, comes to town armed with plenty of pop culture pedigree, in the form of a bestselling 2003 novel (by Khaled Hosseini) and a 2007 Hollywood film, directed by Marc Forster.

It’s easy to see why, too. The story of Amir (Anousha Alamian and Conor Wylie), a privileged Afghan boy, and his friendship with Hassan (Norman Yeung), the son of his father’s servant, features the whole emotional rainbow of one man’s life. At Thursday night’s final preview performance, it was served up by Theatre Calgary in vivid, elegant detail, thanks to inspired efforts by director Eric Rose, designer Kerem Cetinel, sound designer Matthew Waddell and Grammy Award winning Tabla player Salar Nader.

There’s joy, when 12-year-old Amir and best pal Hassan win a Kabul kite fighting competition, setting off a celebration by Amir’s successful merchant father Baba (Michael Peng), who raises Amir on his own (his wife died giving birth to Amir) on a Kabul estate they share with Ali and Hassan.

There’s gut-wrenching violence, when the boys run afoul of Assef (Ali Momen), the local sociopath, who is offended by the presence of Hassan because he is part of the Shiite minority despised by the dominant Pashtuns, who are Sunni Muslims.

There’s betrayal of Hassan by Amir, whose dreamy, passive, literary nature causes his own father to question whether he’s his son, creating an anguished emotional home life that drives Amir to commit a second betrayal of Hassan that has lifelong consequences.

There’s a Communist revolution and a Russian invasion, followed by a hurried, middle-of-the-night escape into Pakistan that transforms Amir and Baba into refugees, who eventually settle as political refugees in San Francisco in the early 1980s.

And if you thought once Amir and Baba made their midnight flight from Kabul to the city by the bay that life would be nothing but postcard views enjoyed over a nice bottle of Napa Valley pino grigio, think again.

America is a whole new economic, emotional and cultural mountain to climb, beautifully illustrated in a series of scenes set at a swap meet run by mostly Afghan exiles. Here, Amir tells us, are men like his father who were once cabinet ministers and businessmen in Afghanistan, now reduced to selling one-eyed Barbies.

Most painful of all for the overwhelmingly patriarchal Afghan community is the sad truth that no one is more caught out of their element in their new home than the fathers, who can’t adjust to American cultural norms and for the most part are forced to work at menial jobs to support their families.

Adapted by Matthew Spangler from Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner manages, in a little over two and a half hours, to tell both a story rooted in ancient rivalries of Central Asia that manages to spin itself into a kind of American dream.

The cast, an eclectic collection of (mostly) men, play multiple roles in this story that spans three countries, numerous languages, with everyone speaking English here. Despite the epic scope, they mostly pull it off, apart from a welcome-to-San-Francisco-it’s-the-’80s sequence that’s a little squirm-inducing. (Possibly because we all squirmed through the ’80s.)

Particularly notable are Alamian, as adult Amir, who delivers the brunt of the narration. That’s a thankless task, particularly in the first act when he’s narrating as he watches his younger self onstage, but Alamian’s’ emotional honesty, even when facing his own brutal failures of character, eventually win you over.

Yeung, as Hassan and then later as Hassans’ son, delivers a powerful, quiet performance, while Peng’s Baba surprises us with his strength, in a harrowing scene in which he confronts a rifle-wielding Russian soldier on the Khyber Pass during the family’s flight from Kabul.

Dalal Badr delivers a strong performance as Amirs’ wife Sopraya, and Momen is frighteningly believable as the sadistic Assef, while Pooria Fard, Omar Alex Khan, Gerry Mendicino and Abraham Asto also do solid jobs bringing an ancient culture to life.

Working with a talented production team, Rose manages to transform the Max Bell Theatre into the dusty streets of Kabul and glittering hills of San Francisco for a few hours.

If it all sounds a little exotic, the one thing that’s familiar about The Kite Runner is Spangler’s well-executed storytelling of Hosseini’s drama-packed novel, which evokes everything from Death of a Salesman to The Grapes of Wrath, (only with Afghans substituting for Okies).

To top it all off, Theatre Calgary’s lobby has been transformed into an art gallery of sorts, featuring a collection of black and white photos of Afghanistan taken in the early 1970s, before three decades of upheaval transformed it into a place no one wants to go anymore.

That is captured in the drama’s moving final scenes, when Amir, against every best instinct, returns to war-torn Kabul to atone for his earlier betrayals of Hassan.

Prior to that return journey, one day at the forlorn northern California flea market, Amir the wannabe writer explains to Soraya that sad stories make the best stories. With The Kite Runner, Theatre Calgary has transformed those sad stories into an exhilarating drama.

Review: Theatre Calgary presents The Kite Runner at the Max Bell Theatre until Feb. 24. Info: Theatrecalgary.com or 403-294-7447. Four and a half stars out of five

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